10
Jul

Day 120.

More new music from around the web!

Kammahav: our friends Christian Gustafsson and Tony Jenkins are back with a new song called “Thirty 4”. It is a bit rockier than previous efforts but I still like it. Are they working on an album or something? We should just wait.

Airhockey: the Miami band will be releasing a tape EP called “Walkthrough” on the 17th. It will have 6 songs and we can preview one of them, the opener track called “Try” which is a dreamy song.

Populardays: the Filipino band did a quarantine session for Shiny Happy Records, now four of the songs from the session are up on Bandcamp as part of the label’s digital club. These are terrific dreampop songs, so don’t miss them out.

Chavales: another digital single by this Spanish duo. “Ernesto” is the name of the song and no, it is not a cover of the classic Los Nikis song of the same name. Maybe it feels like a sequel to that song? I can see that.

“What You’ve Missed So Far” The First Hundred Releases of Blackbean and Placenta: remember the American label Blackbean and Placenta? Well here is a 21 song compilation on the Japanese Galaxy Train label. It is really cool as it includes songs by many classic bands like Boyracer, Orange Cake Mix, The Shermans, Aikagi, The Mondo Crescendo and a favourite of mine, The Ninjas.

—————————————————————–

Jämna Plågor, the even plagues, was formed by Justus Björk on drums, Sam Carlshamre on guitar, Matilda Kihlberg on vocals and synth, Markus Amalthea Magnuson on organ and vocals and Philip Wigselius on bass. This was back in the mid 2000s. Some names do sound familiar, no?

When I wrote many years ago about Your Place or Mine, a terrific Stockholm based band, I got in touch with Sam Carlshamre who pointed me to this other band he had been involved with (he also was involved with Corduroy Utd.). He was the only Your Place or Mine person I got in touch but he wasn’t one of the original members, so he wasn’t keen on answering my questions for an interview. Would have loved to interview Matilda Kihlberg who was the vocalist of the band. Here in Jämna Plågor she sings too. And I notice another name that is familiar to me, that of Markus Amalthea Magnusson. He was in another top band from the period, The Fermats. I was actually in touch with him when I included them in the first volume of The Sound of Starke Adolf series that didn’t become a series (at least not yet!).

So we have some names. But we also have a website the band put together which is still up with links to 6 songs. 6 songs that made up their “Kapitalstaden EP”. 6 songs that were mixed and mastered by Mattias Valenca, I don’t know if this was released in a physical format (I hope there was a CDR – and if there was I’d kill for a copy). But here we have downloads for them all. The songs in the “Kapitalstaden EP” were “Kalla Kriget”, “Berlinlåten”, “Ungdomslåten”, “Konst och Vanliga Saker”, “Plankaren” and “Intro”.  Even cooler, there is a lyric sheet and also guitar chords for each song in PDF format. So if you want to practice your Swedish, take advantage!

It seems the band also had a Myspace back then. That is useless now of course. And that is all it seems. But we can also mention that the song “Plankaren” is actually an adaptation of the French writer Boris Vian’s “Le Déserteur”.

Not much more about them. Don’t even know if they played live. The good thing is that they left this amazing 6 songs that I urge you to discover (or rediscover) as time has passed by they sound still fresh to my ears!

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Listen
Jämna Plågor – Berlinlåten